


We're Living That And More

by Friedcheesemogu



Series: Gravity [3]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: "Space Hawaii", Established Relationship, Gravity Series, Kikipups, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 00:40:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18377390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Friedcheesemogu/pseuds/Friedcheesemogu
Summary: Two years after the events of "If You Need Another Dying Wish," Hikaru considers his life; the more things change, the more they stay the same: always pretty weird.





	We're Living That And More

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ken_ichijouji (dommific)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dommific/gifts).



> So hahaha hi everybody (hi Dr. Cheese)! If you happen upon this in the year of our Mothman 2019, no you didn't miss it before. I'm uh...showing up five years late without Starbucks. It was actually written in 2013 (before my descent into/return to anime fandom) as both an epilogue to the "Gravity" series and a gift for [Ken_Ichijouji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dommific/pseuds/ken_ichijouji) who had just finished a major story she'd be writing for a long time. I just only ever posted "We're Living" to LJ, and with LJ-that-was gone now, it's been homeless for a long time now.
> 
> Here it is, finally, reunited with its brethren with brand new edits to make a shiny completed trilogy for a tiny little ship that will always be special to me. 
> 
> The title is from [ Doomtree's "Team The Best Team" ](https://youtu.be/W84_ASwtNPs)
> 
> <3

“I want you to make me a promise,” Jim says.

Outside the cave, there’s rain, and beyond the rain there’s a cliff, and after the cliff comes this dense crazy forest and it’s actually perfect, everything about this moment is perfect and beautiful. 

Except.

“Yes, Jim.” Hikaru looks at him as evenly as he can. 

The man who was Captain Kirk on the away mission just a few hours ago is now flushed, sweating or rained on, something wet on his temples. His gaze is piercing and commanding and desperate, and Hikaru knows it well by now. Hikaru knows a great deal very well by now. 

“I want you to promise me, Sulu, that if I die here, you will eat off all my skin. Then their sinister plan won’t work. Eat my skin and take my powers. Okay?”

Hikaru is proud of himself for continuing to look deep into Jim’s eyes and say, evenly, “Okay. I promise.”

Because honestly? It’s not even the strangest request Jim has ever made of him.

This is what his life is now. 

-

This one time, Jim died. 

It was literally the worst thing that had ever happened to Hikaru. Even if you took all the other terrible things that had happened from childhood broken bones to Vulcan’s destruction, every papercut and frustrating day in his entire existence and rolled them into one giant ball of sorrows and ash and swallowed glass, it wouldn’t have matched what he felt at that moment. 

He had two weeks to think about it, too, before Jim got better, you know, in that way people get better from being dead if somehow their mystical surgeon friend apparently takes tribbles and space and godlike powers from out of his ass and resurrects him, like Jesus but with more mucus. 

Watching him recover from outside the room, the radiation burns slowly healing into minor crevasses among the acne scars he knew so well, was an exercise in barely controlled rage interspersed with instances of random, desperate hysterical sobbing. 

When Jim finally woke up, when he finally could process words and thoughts, when he could smile again, Hikaru was there. 

And he punched Jim in the face.

McCoy restricted him from the room, which was only fair. 

When Jim came home he slept on the couch for two days. Never mind that it was his own room. 

-

“Baby,” Jim says, “Baby I need you to touch me.”

He’s tugging on Hikaru’s collar, a petulant drunk kitten that smells like sweaty dirt and melon-y perfume, and there was a time when this would have been shocking and exciting and...tantalizing, maybe (although Hikaru doesn’t like that word, the fact remains it’s a pretty good descriptor), But Hikaru is trying to start a fire with a bunch of wet sticks and wet matches and his phaser set on “fail,” and goddammit. Seriously. 

“Later, I promise.”

“Not later now. Now now now now now now.” Jim is practically crawling into his lap.

Hikaru remembers when Jim crawling into his lap would have immobilized him completely, would have activated both his need to be surly and sardonic as well as spiking his anxiety through the top of the ship, but right now he’s in the way.

“If you don’t stop, I won’t eat your skin off when you die.”

“Oh.” Jim is immediately chastened and crawls off him and to a sort of corner where he sits in a sulky little ball. “Fine. Just remembered that you promised.”

Fucking Christ what was even in that shit they gave him. Hikaru blows a strand of dripping hair off his forehead and tries to will a fire to start with his mind. It might work this time. 

-

This other time, Jim didn’t die. 

Actually it was before the time Jim died, but you know, whatever, timelines shift when it comes to memories.

But they were in a bar, on their very first shore leave together, somewhere on “Space Hawaii,” and Hikaru couldn’t find him. It was loud and excited and beautiful and everyone around him was happy and undulating. Hikaru sat at the bar, stirred the ice around his melted Coke and Joojian Cognac and wondered if this was the night Jim would remember that a) he was dating someone, and b) who that someone was and go “oh my god, my priorities,” and slip out the back door. 

A couple approached him, offered him a drink or a dance or maybe both at once, and he tried to smile and turn them down - “I’m waiting for my boyfriend” - and it seemed like maybe suddenly they knew who his boyfriend was, his beautiful, famous, contagious boyfriend, and pitied him, because he was maybe banging seven people in the bathroom and one more who was psychically tuning in from Io. 

“Your loss, toots,” the woman said, and she had dreadlocks down past her ass and a smile like beautiful daggers and that was the first time Hikaru thought “Is this my life?”

Jim showed up five minutes later, grinning from ear to ear and Hikaru wanted to maybe think about crying or biting the thumb that traced softly across his lower lip and asked him to come outside. 

And outside was a car, or more or less a car, more or less a station wagon kind of car, and Jim was grinning from ear to shapely ear, because he’d been bargaining with this one dude for like, _forever_ , and finally the guy let him buy out his rental contract on the vehicle so Jim could take his boyfriend somewhere.

He even said that. 

He said, “I told him I wanted to take my boyfriend somewhere special,” and Hikaru decided that maybe it would be better if Jim ran him over several times and pulled out his eyes. He was speechless. He stayed speechless for a very long time, until Jim handed him the keycard and pushed him toward the driver’s side.

“Let’s go.”

They drove until they found a beach. By that point the first sun was rising and Jim climbed out, pushed the back seats down, sat with his legs dangling out the back and said, “Well, what are you waiting for?”

And Hikaru wanted to say that maybe he was waiting to deserve what he was being given, because he’d been so shallow, even after everything. Even though back on the ship they practically lived together already. Even though Jim said words quietly, shudderingly, achingly to him in the most private, frightening moments of being in love. 

The longer Hikaru stalled the smaller Jim’s smile got, until there was nothing there but what had to be crushing disappointment, and they both knew that he knew and it was awkward and horrible. 

Jim got out of the car and walked down onto the beach a little, standing with his hands in his pockets and staring at the water. 

“Really, Hikaru?”

“I...” he offered, but what could he say? _I thought you were betraying me. I thought you left me. I thought stupid things that I shouldn’t think but we’ve only been together (for real together) for a few months and I was scared._ “I was wrong.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you were.”

“I didn’t know it would...really bother you,” he offered and it sounded incredibly stupid to his own ears, so it must have sounded that much more shitty to Jim’s.

“Bother me?” Jim laughed unpleasantly. “I swear, it’s...sometimes it’s like you and Bones and Spock think I don’t have any feelings. It’s okay to think Jim is off being a fuck, because that’s sort of what’s expected, him being a fuck and all, but it’s not going to bother him.”

Hikaru wanted to crawl into the ocean and suddenly forget out to swim, or maybe just live on a rock, eating sand forever until he died of sunburned shame. 

“I said was wrong.” Hikaru felt like a child, scolded and resentful and hurt and suddenly really ready to lash out and back. “I’m sorry.”

“But you don’t _think_ you’re wrong, do you.”

“I don’t know.”

They yelled. They yelled hard. It was the first, worst fight since the last first worst fight, and when they were done yelling and shoving each other and the sun was high enough that it baked the tears into salt trails on their cheeks, they fucked in the back of the car as hard as they’d fought.

Hikaru forgot to take off his socks. Things managed to remain incredibly hot anyway.

-

It feels like that was a long time ago now. Far away. Nearer than yesterday.

Jim has removed the strangely elaborate loin-cloth-dress-thing he’s been wearing and is winding it into a crappy moist turban that keeps falling apart. His single-minded intensity toward this action is unsettling, but what else is new about Jim. 

Hikaru wonders why none of his clothes have dried off; if the rain here is somehow wetter than the wettest thing that’s ever happened. It would explain why the comms haven’t dried out either. Someone’ll find them sooner or later, though, after they’ve subdued the wild orgy that consumed the rest of the away team. Jim would, ideally for their hosts, have been the "Master of Ceremonies" for it, but Hikaru was not having that shit today. Bad enough that he’d already drunk the magical ceremonial whatever cocktail that had him attempting to crawl up a wall and nearly succeeding by the time Hikaru realized what was happening. 

“This really is my life,” he breathes out, mostly to himself.

“I love you!” Jim suggests brightly from suddenly right next to him, warm damp hands sliding under his shirt and across his stomach, his stubble-started face rubbing against Hikaru’s cheek. “You, me. Hearts. Always.” And then, in a sultry whisper, “Remember to start by gnawing my face first. Okay. How about we have sex.”

-

This other time?

These other times.

Once Jim stood on the bridge when their deaths were pretty much sealed and he looked at everyone but mostly he looked at Hikaru and said “I’m sorry,” because he couldn’t save them all this time, but somehow he did. 

When they’d been together for one year, Hikaru brought him flowers from the botany lab. Jim had a ridiculous allergy attack and spent the rest of the night with his head in Hikaru’s lap and a wet towel on his face. They held hands and Hikaru thought “I am never, ever in my life, going to love anything as much as I love you.”

And then another year passed. And they grew up. And suddenly they weren’t climbing each other every free minute (more like every twenty free minutes). Sometimes they were just sitting together. 

“You know,” Jim said one night, “You’re a lot less of a freak than you used to be.”

Hikaru looked up at him. 

“Is the magic gone, then?”

“Nah,” Jim smiled. “I think it’s just starting.”

Sometimes Jim’s hand would brush across his shoulder on the bridge. It was enough. It would never, ever be enough. 

-

“No, Jim, no, remember I won’t eat your skin if you don’t-”

“Shhhhh, baby, shhh. Shh.” Jim puts three fingers against Hikaru’s mouth. “They told me I could be like a god, a river god, a space river god king. It’s time.”

“In all of this, did they happen to tell you when all your ‘powers’ would wear off? I mean, I’d like to know, before I eat your skin, of course.”

“I dunno, later. Come on, baby, worship me. Let me serve you.”

That’s a bit of an oxymoron, he thinks, but what can Hikaru say to that, really? He does. He will. 

-

This one time, though, Hikaru almost died. And then again. And Spock and Bones and Uhura and Scotty and Chekov and sometimes other people did die, crew members died, and Jim would lie on his side of the bed as still as nothingness and Hikaru wondered if he was praying or cursing, and if praying to whom, and if cursing, also whom. Himself or god or some gods or all gods, spirits and demons and night and suns. 

“Where are you?” Hikaru finally asked him on one of those nights, thinking that he’d meant to ask “What are you thinking about” or “Is there something I can do?” but of course his mind and his mouth had chosen not to interact with each other. 

And Jim just...breathed. 

Very slowly, a long, deep exhale, and then rolled onto his back and slid his eyes to Hikaru. 

“In our bed, of course.” Voice irritated but soft, almost relieved to have the silence broken. “Why? Where are you?”

There was so much Hikaru could say, so many ways to talk back, to pick a mutual snit hoping that brought him out of his dark reverie, to try and be soothing or therapeutic or hopefully something thoughtful but not patronizing…

“I’m with you,” he said, again before the intention had reached his brain. 

Jim looked at him, and suddenly he was still talking.

“Wherever you are, I’m there. I’m with you, I’m next to you, I’m behind you all the way, even when I think you’re wrong. I’m not gonna pretend I won’t let you out of my sight or that there’s not a danger that you’ll try to die without me again, but I’m with you, Jim. Whatever you do. Wherever you want to go. And if you don’t have the strength to get back, then I’ll take the lead.”

It sounded stupid in echo; not as confident as he’d have liked, more cliched than he wanted. 

“...could you maybe be under me right now?” Is what Jim finally offered as a reply, and Hikaru huffed out a sigh of half-exasperation, half-excitement.

“I could probably manage.”

Later, in between the moments of the slick and the hard and the groaning and the twisted sheets, Jim whispered between their mouths “I love you, Hikaru,” and the universe spun outwards slightly faster.

-

“Oh my god. I feel. Like hell.”

Hikaru opens his eyes and decides that it must be morning, or something close to it. He pushes himself up, trying not to think that there’s only the tiniest amount of now horribly dirty ceremonial fabric between his bare ass and the stone floor, and looks over at Jim, who appears to be trying to rub his eyes out.

“Welcome back, Jim.”

His Captain-lover-friend-everything moans and drops his hands to look at Hikaru.

“Tell me I didn’t....” He seems at a loss to finish the sentence, trying to figure out what terrible event he is the most likely to have done or almost done. “You know...something really stupid.”

“You mean your usual?”

“Yes, my usual. Tell me I didn’t.”

“Well you actually didn’t, mostly.” Hikaru gets up and wanders over to his clothes, which are still irritatingly damp. The rain has slowed down a bit, though, and it looks like maybe given a little bit of smacking and swearing, perhaps one of their comms could be coaxed into working. “I mean, you were incorrigible, unhelpful, obnoxious, and sexy, but all of that is pretty much what I’m used to, and given that I’d removed us from society the worst of it happened, I think it all went down pretty well.”

“Bluh,” Jim offers, and pushes himself off the floor too, walking past Hikaru and peering out into the mist. “I guess it’s as good as anything, right?”

“Sure,” Hikaru says, yanking his shirt down over his head. He pauses then, looking at the naked man in the cave entrance, stretching and yawning loudly and grotesquely. Jim rubs a hand through his short, sleep-spiked blond hair and is painfully perfect.

“Where are we?” he asks.

“Together,” Hikaru responds smartly, and when Jim turns back to him he’s trying to look annoyed, but ends up looking more like a begrudgingly amused hungover. 

“Thanks, helmsman. This is why we don’t let you do Chekov’s job.” He starts to wander back into the cave. “Is there even anything to eat here? And where the fuck are...wait, are these my clothes?” Jim is peeling ruined silk off rocks. “Holy shit, what was I wearing, how am I...goddammit!”

Once it occurs to Hikaru to stop laughing -he’ll blame it on being tired, on everything that was last night, everything that today seems ready to be- he takes off his pants and, in an act he might never have imagined himself performing several years ago, strips off his underwear and hands it to Jim (he's done worse things than go commando for a few hours).

And Jim, like this is a perfectly normal solution, puts them on without question, and whacks one of the comms to life. 

Hikaru absently listens to him confer with Scotty, watching low clouds and fog roll through trees he’ll never be able to name. After a few moments, Jim joins him.

“Beam up in about five.”

“Sounds good. Did they get everyone else from the...event?”

“He said everyone else is home, but that Spock is currently not speaking to any of the away party and all further details should only be discussed after we all have a metric shitton of coffee.” He stops and sniffs at himself. “And like two showers.”

“Agreed on all counts.”

Jim leans into him, their fingers brushing.

“What are they going to say when I beam back only in your underwear?”

“I’m sure it’ll be totally shocking,” Hikaru yawns behind his hand, and leans back. “They might think we’re sleeping together or something.”

“Dick,” Jim’s voice is quiet and fond. “...thanks for whatever you did last night. For bringing us here. For keeping me together.”

“Keeping us together,” Hikaru can’t help saying. 

Longer fingers fold in between his, fitting into the spaces flawlessly. 

“Wherever we are.” 

When they start to feel the tickling shimmer of the transport beam, they step apart.

“Hey,” Hikaru calls quickly, “I hope it’s okay I didn’t eat your skin off.”

The look Jim gives him in the moment before the dissolve is indescribably priceless, and Hikaru smiles.

This is his life.

 

end.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before "Star Trek Beyond," and when I saw it in the theater I was like "Boy, it must be hard for Jim to let Sulu go off with his cousin and their daughter while he has to do boring official stuff." Because that's what happened. O_O
> 
> Anyway. I don't know what happens next, but I always meant for this series to be open-ended, like Star Trek itself, the kikipups and the crew going on and having adventures together for the rest of their lives, even if some of those adventures were like...making a really good sandwich.
> 
> Thanks for reading. <3


End file.
